Month: November 2008

Always something new in the SEC.  ‘Have you seen the doll?’ they asked yesterday in Alloa.  And there it was – a fully computerised racially-non-specific doll.  This is the programme which gives teenage girls electronic babies to look after in an effort to curb teenage pregnancies.  This really was something new – if you know the SEC, you will understand that our fertility profile tends to be a bit Abraham and Sarah-ish.  ‘So how has your baby been?’ I asked.  ‘Oh just up twice during the night’ was the reply.

We’re doing a lot of thinking about vocational discernment at present.  Is this not a useful principle which we could apply?  We could give the person who is exploring vocation an electronic congregation to live with for a while.  It would telephone at all sorts of odd times to complain about this and that – about the graveyard and the church being cold.  It would be overwhelmingly friendly for a while and then go all funny.  It would sing hymns too slowly.  It would have a sort of soap opera life of tensions and misunderstandings.  In short it would be delightfully and overwhelmingly human.  I do miss parish ministry – a bit. . sometimes.

Long-standing readers will know that, even though I have little hair, I like to take the measure of a community by having a haircut.  You may remember my encounter with a very camp curly-haired Cape-coloured crimper in Capetown.  Well I’ve never found the right hairdresser in Perth until now – it’s in George Street, just up from the hotel.  It has a kind of outer court with a big old-fashioned cash register.  Inside, it’s a bit chappish with lots of chat and some Piskie connections.  I was asked if I knew ‘hairy duke’.

Meanwhile euphoria continues.  Yes I know he’s black.  But just to hear the US government speak in sentences will be enough for me for a while.  So even as I celebrate the triumph of the rational over the irrational, I also ponder the need to embrace the unconventional against the conventional.

Dominic Lawson in yesterdays Independent responded to the attacks on the banks for not instantly passing on the interest rate cut like this, ‘When the entire political class is united on a single issue, you can be sure that it is largely mistaken: the more conventional is the wisdom, the more certain it is to be based on ignorance or mere fashion.’

Which is in some measure the reason why we are in this mess.  I like the idea that the best investment policy is simply to do the opposite of what everybody else is doing – sell when they buy and buy when they sell.  Because of course what inflates a bubble is precisely the desire of [almost] everybody to join in.  And the ones who join in last are the ones who get hurt the most.

Which brings us of course to the dangerous notion that the church – which presents itself as the most conventional body on earth, as it were – should actually be the most unconventional, counter-intuitive and faithful.

A great night.  I have to confess that I lasted only until about 2.30 am.   But it seemed clear enough by then and I was finding the capacity of David Dimbleby and the BBC to make even this seem stodgy more than I could stay awake for.

So Blogstead Episcopi woke up to a changed world.  And of course those of us old enough to be rooted in Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ can’t help seeing this as the fulfilment of that dream.  But I find myself just as glad to see a sensitive thinker and a world class wordsmith – whatever his colour –  at the centre of government.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

I found myself feeling great admiration for John McCain in his speech – utterly free of self-pity and rancour.  If he had fought the election with the same grace and strength, he would have been formidable indeed

Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer him my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day. Though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise.

Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain.

These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans … I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

 

Slipped in another Thought for the Day for the BBC this morning. Couldn’t resist Obama and the American election. But of course I should really have been talking about Donald Trump and his dune-destroying golf resort. I listened to the First Minister talking about the jobs which will flow and I wondered whether it could really be so. Aren’t many of them likely to be the catering industry pattern of seasonal, low paid and temporary?

Meanwhile we are settling down for a long night here at Blogstead. My Chaplain mentioned almost wistfully that he found strong-minded women of faith like Sarah Palin ‘very, very foxy.’ But he’s out on his own there. I am impervious to her charms, her glasses and her moose-shooting abilities. To be [relatively] serious for a moment .. it seems to me that all American politicians sit well to the right of the political spectrum on which we live. Meaning that Obama is roughly where or to the right of where the Cameroons are. So Blogstead’s support for Obama has more to do with support for rationalists over against irrationalists. Or do I just not understand it?

Well we got home late last night – even though they had simply closed the road which links Cairnryan to Blogstead. It was ‘turn right only’ as we came off the ferry. Amazing. Poppy was a bit ‘travelled out’ and was not amused.

Glad to be home as well. This morning was one of those perfect Sunday mornings as we headed for Dunkeld – snow on all the hills around us; morning sun on the Beech Hedge at Meikelour; partridges on the road near Caputh; wisps of mist over the Tay;

view of blue water through Telford’s Bridge at Dunkeld. And when we got to Birnham, we had Confirmation with Eucharist, the new lighting in the church and a community in good heart.

But of course you’ll be wanting to know how Fin and Emma’s Civil Partnership in Belfast went. Well it was grand. We’re part of the older generation now. So we witter on about how things are and where the last 25 years went to and how none of us has changed a bit We watch the younger generation making its commitments in hope and trust. To be honest, on that very human level matters of sexuality are not the first things one thinks about.

It reminded me of our family visit to the Baghdad Cafe in the Castro area of San Francisco in 1996. The children were younger and we allowed the Rough Guide to help us search for a good value restaurant – not knowing that Castro is the centre of the gay community in San Francisco. Fascinating. But what I remember is how sort of ordinary it all was. Some of the dressing was a little surprising – but it had a very ordinary, comfortable, domestic sort of feel to it. And, in the best sense, that’s how it was with Fin and Emma – and, of course, Alex. And we wish them all the very best.

… does it take to change a lightbulb?  Put that into Google and you get umpteen pages of ‘one to hold the bulb and 99 to turn the house/drink until the room spins round/none – they’d rather live in the Dark Ages.

So how many does it take to deliver cash to the local bank in Dunfanaghy in these peaceful times?

Answer:  One armoured van.  Two army vehicles with lots of people with guns.  One Garda [police] squad car.

Which reminds me that I must write to the nice security people at Edinburgh Airport – to ask why arriving Belfast passengers are always either delivered or bused at great expense to a door at the end of the Terminal marked [surprisingly enough] Belfast Arrivals.  Am I considered to be a security risk as I move from one part of the UK to another?